RB 160 
.C5 

Copy 1 




-ON THE- 



-THEIR- 



ccultation^» f fcanAmutation^), 



-TO THEIR- 



ULTERIOR PATHOLOGICAL FORMS. 



-BY- 



ALCEE 'CHASTANT, M. D. 



NEW ORLEANS: 

E. A. BRAND AO & CO., PRINTERS, 34 MAGAZINE STREET. 

1886. 



in] S S _A_ "Y" 



■ON THE. 



-THEIR- 



Qccultation^^ § Jrandmutation^, 



TO THEIR- 



ULTERIOR PATHOLOGICAL FORMS, 



; ^ BY- 



ALCEE CHASTANT, M. D. 




XEW ORLEANS: 

E. A. BRANDAO & CO., PRINTERS, 34 MAGAZINE STREET. 

1885. 



.Cs 







CONTENTS. 

I'lie heredity of morbid principles a law common to all animality. 

Tlie latent and passive states of occult inheritances, as the factors of 
morbid incubations and idiosyncracies^ as well as special apyretic 
and pyretic affections. 

The active or pyretic elaborations, combinations and transmutations 
of a certain morbid hereditary principle to special endemic and 
epidemic diseases, as the result of organic la;vs, both local and 
general. 

Parallel of pliysiological and pathological modifications and hybrid- ' 
ations. 

Pliysiological and ])athological chemistry, or the metamorphosing 
forces of the organism. 

The organism at no time directs its re-active forces against princi- 
ples which are unknown to it. 

Organic forces in relation to the principle or principles which dis- 
turbs them. 

Elective affinity of rubeolous and scarlatinous fluxion afy phenomena. 

' Evolution and transmutation of their morbid principles, versus the 
current theory of contagiousness, both individual and atmos- 
pheric, as commonly alleged. 
Etiological unity of scarlet fever and measles. 

The antithesis of their atmosplieric origin and contagion. 

Their external and internal pathological manifestations as ^symptoms 

of a hidden hereditary cause. 
Character of their morbific matter. 

The ulterior relations of the same hereditary principles with the 
nervous system. 

Scarlet fever and measles should be eradicated from the list of 
endemic and epidemic atmospherical diseases. 

General remarks on the usage and necessity of a prophylactic treat- 
ment for tlie purpose of eliminating from the s^'stem the ulti- 
mate constitutional principle of those two diseases, said to be 
atn osphtirical in their source. 



MEDICAL APHORISMS AND PHILOSOPHY 

OX THE 

Law of Variety aiul Diversity iii tie Uiiiiy of Priiciiilos, 



iQMSuiuch as experience has long- ago demonstrated that 
innateness like heredity (which are viral laws incessautly active 
ill generation and whose duplex action is. in the being, also 
the harmony of the similar and the dissimilar) reflects the ele- 
ments and the forms of primitive life, why then should not 
the protean changeableness, of ills and diseases, be subject 
to the same rule, and this, especially since the observation cf 
centuries, as well as the occult sciences, incontestably establish 
the fact that the variery and diversity of the good and the evil 
qualities of the normal type of beings were from the primitive 
organization, neither an accident nor an anomally, but merely 
phenomena of organic relations inseparably bound to the ener- 
gies of universal order. 

If then, the observation of occult sciences ostensibly demon- 
strates in the order of procreation as elsewhere in the order of 
inorganic creation, the unconditionality of the law of variety 
and diversity, vs-hy, therefore, should not the irrepressibility of 
these two x^rimordial laws (ot* creation and procreation) have 
reproduced in the generation of beings the protean changes of 
original ills and diseases, just as they have reproduced in the 
unity of species and individuals, the unity of physical and bio- 
logical characters, which likewise evidently relate to a cause 
superior and anterior to all the conditions of the primitive act 
of generation. -'Th-y who base generation,'- says \Ya11ostou. 
•'on the stipposition that it is material and that it is in the body, 
either as one of its parts or as its modification appear to me to 
deceive themselves grossly, because the body itself is nor en- 
gendered by the parents. It really passes into them 5 they lend 



-)«(- 



it, so to speak, a transient home and subsistence ; but it cannot 
be formed by them nor grow from any one of their parts." A 
doctrine which recognizes no element nor any part of the organ- 
ization nor even the unity of its entire mechanism, that nature 
of principles and immediate causes which animate it ; a doc- 
trine according to which life is not a consequence of the organi- 
zation, but rather the organization an effect of the laws of life. 
And, moreover, as Wallastou implies, it is not the beings 
strictly speaking, who reproduce themselves, but rather nature 
which creates in them and by them through generation. This 
doctrine is all the more true, since mankind, with all its superi- 
ority of organization, only reproduces itself automatically. 

The seminal fluid, says medical philosophy, as well ancient as 
modern, flows from all parts ot the body, and it contains poten- 
tially all the faculties and principles with which life is endowed. 
If then there are vices, material or immaterial, inherent in some 
part or in the whole of the organism of the generators, such 
vices must necessarily tran«!mit themselves to the seminal fluid, 
and from it to the foetus, since this emanates from that source. 
The universality of action of the two generators is, therefore, 
the faculty which the father and mother have of acting imper- 
sonally upon all the torces and all the parts, physical and moral, 
of the being engendered. Otherwise, the principle of the di- 
verse, which relates to the laws of innateness; and the similar, 
which relates to the laws of heredity, would not be in them- 
selves the source of their own power. 

If then, it is admitted that generation from the primitive or- 
ganization was in itself only an instrument of intermediary 
conditions by which the innateness, as well as the heredity of 
good and evil qualities, physical as well as moral, were to per- 
petuate themselves from generation to generation, we should, 
therefore, be then authorized to ascend even to the mysteries ot 
the laws and sources of life for the explication also of a certain 
pathological variety and diversity, which the theories of gener- 
ation have been powerless to explain, outside of the pre-existence 
of certain normal or abnormal principles, which, like weeds in 
Nature, must have derived their origin in some way from laws 
common to all animality. 



-)7(_ 



But it is not ou\y in the j^Iaysical constitution of beings that 
these laws occur. They may be found in a like degree in the 
foundation of the moral forces and sensibilities which Plato and 
Aristotle refer equally to the bad qualities of the physi^^al or- 
ganization. Those who are so mercenary as to seek fur the in- 
terests of their descendants in pecuniary alliances had better 
take heed of the injunction of the stoical philosophers, who en- 
join them rather to seek their real welfere in a sound constitu- 
tion — the true promotor of moral qualifications. 

It is by the admission of these facts that Gr. de Buzariengues 
has combat ted the thesis of J. J. Eousseau, that a king should 
allow his son to marry any woman with sympathetic tastes and 
disposition, even were she the daughter of a hang-man. "I 
would fear," says the celebrated naturalist, " unless the children 
of a like union, placed upon a throne, should become the execu- 
tioners of their subjects." 

There is, in truth, a great book spread open to all eyes, writ- 
ten in all languages, where the intelligent can follow up the 
genealogy of all the i)hysical and moral qualifications of morbid 
heredity. This book, wherein there is no want of mention of 
either executioners or victims, is also that of modern history. 

If then, in the developm^-nt of physiological and psycholog- 
ical facts, the law of innateness as heredity being otherwise the 
expression of the seminal transmission of the similar and dis- 
similar, presuppose the pre exist^^nce of the essence, both matij- 
rial and immaterial, of the phenomenon or phenomena 
transmitted. The law of innateness would not be, therefore, 
more exclusive or more restricted than the admitted law of 
heredity in the reproduction of normal or abnormal principles, 
which generation has propagated since the night of time. It is 
then not exclusively in the dir-. ct line that the issue may owe to 
the law of innateness and that of heredity a physical, physio- 
logical or pathological type which bears resemblance to that of 
its mediate authors. 

We have nothing better to do, says Montaigne, than to find 
miracles and new difficulties. It appears to me that among the 
things we see in every day life, there are such incomprehensibly 
strange things, that they surpass all the difficulties relative to 



-) 8 (- 

miracles. What monster does that drop of prolific fluid from 
which we are produced bear in itself not ouly the impressions 
of the corporeal form, but also the character aud iucli nations 
of our fathers ? That drop of water, where does it lodg'e this 
infinite number of forms? And how does it bear those resem- 
blances of a progress so bold and irregular that the great grand 
son shall resemble his great grand father, the nephew the uncle, 
the niece the aunt? Montaigne," says a distinguished natural- 
ist and physiologist, would have been greatly more astonished 
if he had known that in that drop of water there are an unlim- 
ited number of qualities, each one endowed with that property 
which it bears relatively to their collective whole." 

If then we are the heirs of ages and that the evil as well as 
good qualities of past generations still live in us, generation in 
our apprehension must, therefore, have reproduced just as really 
the essential unity of certain pathological species, as it has re 
produced elsewhere that of natural species. And, moreover, 
do we not every day hear spoken of the inuateness of tempera- 
ments and likewise of hereditary vices, material as well as im- 
material, the study and experience uf which have, in spite of 
climate, food aud social media proven long ago heredity by 
heredity, notwithstanding the freaks of generation ? Freaks, we 
say, from which result, in time and place, all the varieties and 
diversities of the phenomena whose oi^cult princi[)h^s remain 
in the organism in a hitent state or are at birth and successive 
periods of life like other elements of sexuality. And further- 
more has not experience, as well as the history of comparative 
pathology, taught us that each species of vegetable kingdom 
and of the animal kingdom hears {more suo) in its organization 
distinct attributes essential to development, both pathological 
and physiological, peculiar to the species? 

This period of morbid occultation of phenomena, whatever 
may be the nature of the dynami>^m which animates it, has 
been designated by the term predisposition," and ir has given 
rise to a discussion regarded as fundamental, between the 
heredity of predisposition and hitent heredity, or idiosyucracy 
of the disease; from which flow so many particular forms of | 
pathological heredity. 



-) 9 (- 

If it be granted then that in ]\ke manner as the seed of vege- 
table species, the seminal principle of each natnral species, 
contains potentially divers attributes, mediate and immediate, 
botti pathological and phj'siological, let us then seek, through 
the innumerable complexities of the nature and structure of the 
natural species for the fundamental principle, the conditions, 
the essential general law of hereditary principles, which have 
the power to produce ulteriorly, special effects as diseases 
appropriate to the species. ' 

Without doubt, from the mass of the proi)Ositions springing 
from this subject sometiiing of originality may, in a mauDer, be 
presented. But the idea of the pre-existence of certain morbid 
essences or unity in maladies, contemporary with the human 
race, is not new, since the a!icients said : ^'Apothecam hoe virus 
recondentem quivis homo in se gerit fermpntum morbosum, nunc 
citus nunc serins actuosum rekJentur.''^* 

In pathogeny as in physiology, we find ourselves again before 
the celebrated doctrine of the unity of origin and nature of all 
the hereditary ills — ills which represent here only the disguise- 
ment or metamorphoses of seminal duality. 

That these principles have been primordial ly normal and ab- 
normal, simple, double or threefold, we are not able to concede. 

But we believe, nevertheless, in an interior force, a dynamism, 
which predisposes it or them to an ulterior duplication by mod- 
ifying by invisible degrees th(^ constitution — and also predis- 
])0ses it, from afar, to the development of one or more affections, 
according also to the era, climates, localities and the periods of 
life. From the fact that these influences may be acquired, we 
admit alike that they can determine through generation modifi- 
cations and alterations of the physiological state of beings. 

Sometimes, on the contrary, by virtue of a partial or general 
perturbation of these diverse occult modifications, they cause 
the explosion of maladies, special as well as endemological, the 
most diverse in their forms. 

Relatively, again, therefore, to the mystery which in a man- 
ner binds the princiide of disorders and maladies to that of 



*Everv human being contains them within himself, ayd sooner or later these germs 
develop. 



-)10(_ 

plastic life J whether they have derived their origin primarily 
from the incomprehensible magic of the primordial laws of 
organization, or, ulteriorly, from the very anarchy of defiance 
of the order established by natural laws, they enter none the 
less\is to us, into the succession of transfers and metamor- 
phoses of seminal duality ; and these, like other elements, have, 
since the night of time, served to impress on constitutions and 
temperaments multiform predispositions from which emanate 
ulteriorly the passive and active phenomena of morbid heredity, 
both of acute and chronic affections. 

The latentcy of abnormal principles in the duality of the 
physiological germ, therefore constitutes the initial point of 
hereditary diseases. It cannot, therefore, be true that even a 
morbid state, can recognize for its cause a force without a ma- 
terial substance. 

THE SECOND PHASE OR PATHOaENIG DECREE — MORBID IDIO- 

SYNCRACY. 

This is the .veritable incubation of those predispositions or 
occult agencies, which, without themselves being the phenom- 
ena, which they must ulteriorly represent, are the first prin- 
ciples thereof, of that order which imprint in the economy, a 
sensib lity abnormal to the action of the causes, as well organic 
as occasional, which develop it under an appearance of indefi- 
nite morbid states partial or general. 

THIRD PHASE, OR PATHOLOGICAL DEGREE. 

The order of those pathological phenomena which are appre- 
ciable to the sense of art, are for that sense only defined meta- 
morphoses of one or more of these morbid incubations j these 
incubations, under the sway of the organic activities and of the 
occasional causes which participate in their patent manifesta- 
tions, and of which the ulterior pathological characters, shall 
also be relative to different temperaments and epochs of life, as 
are elsewhere the physical and physiological characters of zoo- 
logical beings. Here again, therefore, is only involved the 
occdltation of the phenomena of morbid heredity transmitted 
homogeiierically from ancestors to decendants even to our pos- 
terity, and whose unity of principles refers back, if not ah 
initio^ at least traditionally to tlie people of the Pharoahs. 



-) 11 (- 

In addition to this, the science of natural observations as 
well as the modern history of heredity in diseases • admit that 
there are not even among vices and ills proceeding from primi- 
tive creation as otherwise from civilization, oone of which can 
we still find the peculiar traces in our state of nature. 

Seeing, therefore, that man occupies the top of the zoological 
scale and in view of the relationship which unites him to the 
very basis of the mineral kingdom, in what respect th<fn can 
the human species (in its physical constitution) have been more 
privileged under the decrees of this uoiversal law, which in a 
manner requires that every species should bear in itself the 
essence not only of its orgaoization, but that also of its dis- 
orders and death ? 

Will it be then supposed that in the universality of causes 
derogatory to the physiological moditications of man, that there 
are onh^ the atmospheric, the climacteric media, and the hygenic 
causes that can be prejudicial to him, and there cannot exist in 
him original influences which have their initial points in the 
- very attributes of procreation itself? These being required not 
only to reproduce but to continue in the great universal act of 
generation the decreed and providential works of creation. 

Do we not see too often anomalies that are strange to authors 
— beings which have borne in life only the features of man, in- 
nocently capable and sometimes culpable of all the instincts of 
the brute'? — which proves again that this diversity of instinct 
and character pertains to laws superior aiid anterior to all the 
conditions of the act for which it was developed, for as Sinibaldi 
says in fitting words : ''If birth and education had not made 
me Christian, I should say that it is not through the instiga- 
tion of the devil, but rather through the viciousness of the 
humors that man is led into sin." 

In view, therefore, again of the mysterious order which binds 
and diversifies the occuUation of good and evil qualities, to the 
physical constitution of beings, there must equally exist 
throughout the laws of organization a dynamism which diversi- 
fies the principle of ills and maladies in relation to the nature 
and structure of the beings. Let there be then no misconcep- 
tion, for in the same manner as the peculiarity of good and evil 



physiological qualities of beings liave been coiitiiuied from the 
origin of time, in like manner has it also been with their pre- 
dispositions or pathological inherences. And do we not, in 
fact, find at the present day in medical practice certain morbid 
inherences or manifestations transmitted from the Ante-Mosaic 
period. 

Sometimes, says Biirdach, heredity only transmits a physical, 
physiological or pathological (quality in the succeeding genera- 
tion — the most latent forms in the ascending scale, say G-. De 
Buzariengues ; without alteration or deduction in the decendiug 
one. 

It would then be a great error t) believe that the heredity of 
the direct line follows itself constantly and without a solution 
of continuit}'. 

Recurrent heredity, or atavism finds, therefore, its physical, 
physiological and pathological explanation also in the commu- 
nity of blood, which, in fact, is nothing more than a living veil 
thrown over the past and the present of the species and families 
which it represents, even as far as their most precocious or 
tardy affections. 

If, therefore, the proteism of ills and diseases was not like 
that of the physical and biological characters of zoological 
beings, ctill under the fatal prerogative of the secondary laws 
of generation, would not observation as well as experience have 
sufficiently demonstrated that nature had also instituted in the 
grand universal act of generation forces the most profound as 
well as the most powerful bonds of blood.* 

If these material and immaterial infiuences were not true, 
why shonld horticulturists, ornithologists and stock-breeders 
employ, at this day, the contagion of life to impress upon plants 
and upon beasts their distinctive features as well as the phy- 
sical and moral characters of their progenitors? ^or let us 
forget the marvelous results which they obtain in making selec- 
tion of the males and females which contribute to the profit of 

*Wo unto you. Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because ye bnild the tombs of the 
prophets, and •garnish the sepulchres of the rijrhteous, aud .say, if wc had been in the days 
of our fathers, we would not liavo been partakers with them in the blood of the proi)hets. 
Therefore, ye be witnesses unto yourselves, tliat ye are the children of them which killed 
the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your Fathers. St. Matthew, chap. XXIII, 
V. 2'J-34. 



-) (- 

this industry. So far as regards tlie hiiinau species, analogous 
tacts concerning the illicit mixture of the primitive classes are 
related in the langu;ige of the Hindoos, where all the degrees 
of niongrelism have names, and form a collection of human 
varieties, more intricate even than those of the miscegenation 
of the black and the white. If then, there is no fecundation, 
no hybridation of the two kingdoms, where the election, the 
mixing and the combination of the principles transmitted do 
not comprise all the characters, as well anatomical as physio- 
logical, what then must we think of the incongruities of morbid 
and pathological heredity, which through the duality of semi- 
nal principles may likewise hav^e the same pathological results 
as has the hybridation of physical and physiological qualities 
of zoological beings ? For we know beyond doubt that physio- 
logical heredity, as well as pathological heredit^^, attach them- 
selves to all the tissues, all the organs and to all the organic 
system, and all the more for the fact that individuals even the 
most happily born and the best constituted, have not an equal 
force of all their organs, nor an exactly perfect equilibrium of 
their functions. 

The qualities of the seminal duality would then have, upon 
our constitution and character, more power than all external 
physical and moral influences. 

It is, therefore, very much for these reasons, that health abso- 
lutely perfect is, perhaps, something not to be found, and that 
imlividuals differ so much as to health one from another, accord- 
ing to the preponderance of one or miother of these hereditary 
predispositions. Granted then, that with variations which con- 
stitute the essence of physiological facts — morbid heredity 
follows the same laws, it would be quite as well, in our judg- 
ment, in the elaborations, transmutations and even the hybri- 
dation of these hereditary principles, that we should seek the 
medical philosophy if not the very etiology of certain noso- 
graphic spontaneities still included in the nomenclature of 
certain acute sporadic and endemic diseases claimed as of at- 
mosphei leal contagions. 

To admit on one hand the election, the commingling and the 
combination of all principles which constitute the physical and 



— ) 14 ( — 

pliysiological cbaracteis of the being, and afterwards to di\est 
them of pathological heredity, because they are not all invaria- 
bly transmitted — or rather because it is impossible to say when 
and where the disturbance of these influences and their meta- 
morphases begins, or to say where they reach their ultimate 
l)athological expression, — would not this be to misconceive the 
occultation and combinations of the principles which constitute 
elsewhere the leprose, the dartrose, the rheumatose, the scrofu- 
lose. the tuberculose, the cancerose and the squirrhose, which 
have, like syphilis, all drawn their primary essences from the 
diversity of seminal principles, and In consequence from the 
very element of the being of which the heredity of principles 
infuses itself again with the contagion of life; and this not- 
withstanding also the want of constancy, of contiguity of which 
the immunity or non-immunity of transmission forms another 
part of the laws of generation. But the heredity of certain 
principles of diseases, or if preferred, predisposition to diseases 
does not limit itself to the specific character of these immuni- 
ties. Seminal expansion, or rather, the organism, retains in 
130wer of the seminal duality other occult elements or i^rinciples 
whose ei3iorescence and ulterior manifestations* presuppose the 
' ulterior action of agencies or of a morbid unity, which like the 
teeth, the hair, the beard, the color and divers other physiolog- 
ical attributes, have like them less need of occasional exterior 
causes than the evolution of the different successiv^e periods ot 
life, for their i^athological development. 

Says Professor Piorry : ''We believe that a disease which ac- 
tually develops itself with acute symptoms is, in relation with 
an exterior cause, more or less active, which we have noted. 
"Then," says he, "the study of heredity in maladies, both acute 
and chronic, often leads to an eiitirely different view and demon- 
strates that under ver^' many circumstances, that cause has 
been only the occasion for the development of a hidden and la- 
tent cause which depends upon the organism itself." In effect 
that an accidental immersion in water, a sudden suppression of 
persi)iration provoke a coryza, a bronchial catarrh, pleurody- 
mia, an attack of asthma or of rheumatism, etc., etc., shall we 



♦Reference is here had to the morbid h«re litary principles which constitute the nomen- 
clature of acut« pyretic as well as apyretic chronic skin diseases from infancy to old age. 



-) 15 (- 



conclude from this that they do not derive their origin from a 
latent internal cause'? What is said above is for ns only the 
record of atmospheric influences upon other morbid or hereditary 
principles to which scarlatina, rubeola and variola are refer- 
able. 

And again, how many affections are there, acute or chronic, 
of which we can affirm that they proceed from a single cause ? 

Science, as we believe, answers " not one". 

Thus it must be, moreover, with endemics, catarrhal, occu- 
lary, naso-pharnygeal, laryngo-bronchial, etc., without omitting 
here even exanthematic, scarlatinous and rubeolous endemics 
and epidemics. 

As diverse as these fluxionary affections appear to be, they 
are all, in our opinion, only the effects of an identical determi- 
nate cause from^morbid heredity, whose diversity of forms and 
elective characters depend exclusively on organic laws and or- 
ganic forces like those of the dynamism, which refer to the phys- 
ical and physiological type of beings. 

In original as well as acquired pathogeny, the magic of the 
metamorphosing forces ot the organism, in the human species, 
is more fertile and inexhaustible in realization than our imagi- 
nation. Far from having only one model, it works the finite as 
also the indefinite by the variety ot the mutations of the same 
principle. To admit it, we have but to look upon the variety of 
syphilitic efflorescences so very different itself in the identity of 
its character or manifestations in its secondary or tertiary forms. 

Here again, then, it is manifest that the apparent identity of 
a single hereditary cause does not demand by itself the identity 
of characters in its external manifestations. 

Besides, in pathology, as in physiology, the organism, as we 
have said, is not, properly speaking, the expression of any ab- 
solute rule. It is essentially only a variable compound of affin- 
ities, comminglings and combinations of principles transmitted 
from sexuality on their ways to morbid as well as [)hysiological 
electiveness, and consequently also to ulterior nosological hered- 
itary entities. In truth, in pathogeny, as well as in physiology, 
it would seem that every normal or abnormal principle knows, 
beforehand, the role it has to fill. 



-) 16 (- 

If then, in pathology as iu physiology, the heredity of good 
and evil qualities of organic attributes (wliicb innateness, as 
well as heredity, controls in all beings) were not from the be- 
ginning anything else than the transitions and metamori)hoses 
of homogeneous principles to the heterogeneous, of the uniform 
to the multiform, and of the indefinite to the definite, who of us 
of the nineteenth century dares therefore to affirm that scarla- 
tina and rubeola, varieties of which we cannot deny the strict 
parentage of their characters and phenomena, as well general as 
special, do not result from a complex cause of morbid heredity? 
For the reason that in another view, the pustule representing 
the variolous entity, is eminently virulent and inoculable. does 
not rob our good faith of the conviction quite as assured also of 
variolous heredity of which the vesiculous, pustulous, squam- 
mous nature of the eruption is, a posieriorL as much relative to 
morbid heredity as pemphigus roseola in childhood, consump- 
tion or tubercular deposits, necrosis, caries of the bones in adults 
are to syphilitic heredity. Thus again, we claim the existence 
of a like pathologic cutaneous, catarrhal naso-pharangeal, lar- 
yngo-bronchial and gastro-intestinal phenomena of rubeolous 
and scarlatinous pyrexia, all of which are but modifications and 
metamorphoses of an original morbific matter designated by the 
ancients under the very old French name of dartre — and mod- 
ernly under that of herijes — instead of principe dartreux, because 
it is said by the latter that outside of hereditary transmissibil- 
ity, it was not inoculable. 

Whilst we hold with them that it is not iuoculable, we claim, 
nevertheless, that under the metomorphosing forces so powerful 
of the organism, it becomes in time and place the morbific prin- 
ciple, — nay, the very virus of scarlatinous, rubeolous exanthe- 
mata, endemic and epidemic, which exantlieraata have towards 
that hereditary morbid principle a link just as evident as 
])emphigus, roseola, and other erythematous patches have with 
modified syphilitic poison. 

An expression (Principe Dartreux) we say again so repug- 
nant to the masters of the art which we nevertheless prefer 
also to that of Herpes not merely because it has less doctrinal 
signification, but be tause it expresses in reality the unity of the 



-) 17 (- 



lierpetegeilic and eczeniatic si)ecies, whose differential charac- 
ters have as much value for us as the moral and physical dis- 
similarity among- brothers and sisters, and whose ulterior 
metamorphosing [)henomeua are in reality the theme of our 
subject. 

If then, by virtue of an order of apparent relations, each 
variety bears on itself tlie imprint of predispositions or'agencies 
peculiar to the nature and structure of the species, why then 
are not scarlatina, rubeola and variola, in their essential proper- 
ties as much inherent in the human species as the morbid prin- 
ciples of grease (eaux aux jambes) glanders, farcin, vaccinal 
pustule, rot, rabies are to the animal species, and which i)re- 
vail both endemicall^^ and epidemically'? And this all the more 
since the elaboration of the principle or principles which con- 
stitute the scarlatinous rubeolous and variolous virus, and even 
syphilis, are not inoculable upon animals, whereas the maladies 
of animals are, upon the contrary^ all^more"or less directly or 
indirectly transmissable to mankind. This tends to prove that 
the nature of these diverse affections pertains originally to 
special causes, which to our view seem always to have for 
organic root a morbid predisposition to the species itself, and 
whose hereditary evolutions have remained hitherto a subject of 
misai)prehension for exterior contagious influences. 

"Yes, it will be answered," but they are all like many other 
undescribed affections, maladies of ultra-microscopic origin 
whose analogies we find in putrid waters and which swarm in 
myriads upon atoms of dust. But definitively, from the fact 
which we are now obliged to admit, that invisible life is spread 
throughout all nature, must we, therefore, to the exclusion of 
facts just as conclusive concerning the original and special 
maladies of the species, maintain that the3^ also emanate like- 
wise from atmospheric and telluric dust.* 

*Wheu studying nature in another field, we observe on diseased o'' decaying trees new 
vegetations forniii g. which are not found on trees of the same kind which are in a state of 
perfect health, and that dift'ereut species of minute < ryptogamic corpuscles develop them- 
selves, whose formation depends solely upon the character of the disease and not upon 
atmospheric and telluric dust. When we consider thr.t the same facts have occurred within 
and without the structures of zoological ordci- since the night of time, we may therefore 
justly regard certain of these animal and vegetable effete as the results of primitive altera- 
tions and degeneresceuses of the very subscauce of the being. This is only another manner 
of sayinii" that many pathological alterations, solid and liquid, are more or jess susceptible of 
corpuscular diveigeuces, as to which llaspail, one of the oldest of distinguished microgra- 
phers, wished to treat the human race as should be done for the preservation of commeicial 



-) 18 (- 



Would not this [be to ignore all the principles of morbid 
heredity, original as well as acquired, the very unity of princi- 
ples to cutaneous non-parasitic maladies, as well as their combi- 
nations and pathological metamorphoses to a more perfect 
immobility. Eeference is here had to the great pyrexial cuta- 
neous affections. What indeed are purulent variolous fever 
and scarlatinous and rubeoious exanthemata, if they are not 
special lluxionary affections which heredity has reproduced 
since time immemorial, and which the organism, at certain 
moments or periods of life, seeks by all its power to eliminate 
under correlative or pathological forms ? 

Besides by the unanimous admission of many pathologists, it 
is the same principle which determines discrete and mild vari- 
ola and the confluent malignant variola 5 and it is again very 
X^robably the same principle which in the opinion of many doc- 
tors of weighty authority, causes to appear also varioloid and 
varicella; and that too notwithstanding the non-inoculation or 
inoculation of vaccinal virus and the non-concurrence of an 
atmospheric condition — which, however, when present only has- 
tens, according to us, the occult modes of actions and reactions 
of the organism, which brings forth one form or the other of 
that very morbid unity. 

Thus, so far as eruptive diseases are concerned, we have been 
able to account for the misconception between real atmospher- 
ical contagious causes and those springing from morbid hered- 
itary causes depending, it is true, sometimes upon mediate 
influences^ for their development. In illustration, may we not 
ask what, indeed, have atmospherical influences to do with the 



furs or the i)reparatioii of natural history. The alteration and disintegration of dead or 
living organic substances, -which we may call cheuaicaJ, wiJl he subject therefore to patho- 
logical influences Avhich are able to bring forth microscopic life as elsewhere vegetable and 
animal broth, etc., does for artificial culture. Our confreres (and readers) will pardon us 
once more, for many others not of their number may not know that microscopic beings, 
according to the nnirbid labor which has pioduced them, have been recognized by all anti- 
quity, not only in the blood, mucus, urine and the substance of beings, but also iii the ele- 
ments of embryonic life, which have disappeared without the inoculation of antagonistic 
species. 

A few year.s ago this znchimic, it is true, would have laised violent protests ; but at this 
time when science has raised ;i corner of tlio veil oJ' tlio circumstances of heterogeneity in 
the decrepitude of plastic, vegetable and animal lii'o. < liis i)athological hyperbole is accepted 
at least by many superior inteJligences. If, tiicu, almost the same relations exist among 
the characters of inorganic chemistry, which repioduces them under a thousand forms m 
nature, and pathological chemistry, micrograph ers and coutagionists will have no more to 
do than to exhume the micro-organisms of sepulchres and piitrid water to account fiT the 
generation of microscopic boin - .s wiiicli only require pliysico-chemica.1 alterations of the dead 
or living constituent elements I'lom which they nuiy develop themselves. The ancients 
therefore have justly said: "If life is the mother of death, death in turn gives birth to life." 



-) 19 (- 



occultation of varieties and classifications of syphilids or any 
other constitutional or hereditary principles 

If the organism furthermore takes the pains to fabricate a sac- 
charine substance (diabetes), rheumatism, etc., not at the cost of 
the vegetable kingdom, but rather of the elements which have 
lived within itself, why then should the organism abstain from 
producing virulent pyrexia, scarlatinous, rubeolous and vario- 
lous, whose exterior characters are as much relative to patho- 
logical chemistry of morbid heredity as the physiological he- 
redity of toxic, venomous and virulent principles of mineral, 
vegetable and animal products are to the nature and structure 
of certain species ? 

Let it be granted then for once that, independently of atmos- 
pheric and telluric influences, the organism can, under the 
empire of certain general perturbations of morbid heredity, de- 
velop certain pyretical entities even virulent. I^ow, in pathog- 
eny as in physiology, it is impossible to comprehend the mobility 
of phenomena attached to the first origin of things without 
knowing them in their entirety as a combined whole ; especially 
since the organism^ as we have said, is an abyss of laws where 
every appearance of transmitted principles vanishes before the 
inscrutable dynamism both of elective affinities and modifica- 
tions, and transmutations, as well pathological as physiological. 

In animal economy, nothing is isolated and all must be con. 
jointly bound together. 

We know, nevertheless, that every thing or principle, normal 
or abnormal, has its role to fill. 

It has been and will be thus with the metamorphosis of sem- 
inal elements, in the embryonic cellules, with epithelial, pigmen- 
tary, calcareous and dental metamorphoses, epidermic iiroducts, 
horny and hairy, proceeding even from unknown ancestors, 
metamorphosis of vegetable cellules in anatomical elements — all 
irrevocably subjective to the primordial laws of anthro[)Ogeny, 
without which it would be impossible for us to comprehend how 
products should dilfer from the producers. 

So also have there been and are still pathological essences or 
principles peculiar to the species under the rule of the vital 
laws and properties of organic media before attaining their 



-) 20 (- 

definite pathological form or forms. Again, were it not tliat 
the nature of the organisms in individuals differ one from 
another, whether in their constitutions or in the special ele- 
ments which distinguish them, then heredity or morbid unity, 
without the evolutions and' transmutations of the principles 
which it represents, would alwa^^s manifest itself by a type ab- 
solutely fixed. That which characterizes the organism of each 
individual is therefore really a great variety and a great diversity 
of nature. 

How and why then shall pathological heredity or the unity of 
morbid predispositions, equally as necessary to acute as well as 
chronic diseases, evade that law of i)athological varif^ty and 
diversity common to the two poles of life ! 

Moreover, the observation of life and of its functions, that of 
suffering from the cradle to the grave, leaves no doubt to any 
one that there exists an order of phenomena exclusively subser- 
vient to the activity of procreation, since we recognize at all the 
stages of life intermittent metamorphoses both physiological 
and pathological. 

Can we pretend henceforth to assign a limit to the dynamism 
cf organic attributes upon the outline of hereditary princii)les 
which sleep in the organism in a latent state like heterogeneity 
in nature, waiting only for anthropo-chronological circumstances 
not only relative to different successive periods of life, but cor- 
relative also to certain laws of organic afSnities. 

In fact, it w^ould seem that there are germs or seminal prin- 
ciples of certain acute and chronic maladies, as also of vegetable 
seeds mouldering in soil appropriate or even refractory to their 
natures. There must therefore be a law of inertia as well as of 
exemption in the organism, since they may sleep for years in the 
economy before their insidious effects manifest themselves. 

If, then, the affections from which human nature suffei'sin onr 
times are in general referable to seminal duality, the heredity of 
principles in acute mahidies will be no more irrational than thv, 
heredity of chronic maladies, which are in themselves but other 
special forms and types of anatomical electiveness and modifi- 
cations of the same i)rinciples. The occultatioii of morbid her- 
edity to acute special mahidies would then also have its chrono- 



-) 21 (- 

logicril modes of elective affinities and modifications, as tliat of 
sab-acate and clironic diseases have their special anatomical 
and patliolo.sjical elections and manifestations. It cannot be 
don bted then that hereditary diseases have their chronological 
elections and manifestations as others have also their geog- 
raphy. 

ORGANIC FORGES IN RELATION TO THE PRINCIPLE "WHICH 
DISTURBS THEM. 

If, then, in the normal state the economy snbjects the physio- 
logical germ (embryogenia) to all the degrees of iinimality, 
before it attains its complete evoUition of independency, how 
much more varied will be the manifestations attached to a mor- 
bid heredity, sach, for example, as that of the ])rincipe dartretix, 
which in the very unity of the organism iike those varieties of 
flowers growing from seeds oi the same kind, giving out varie- 
ties as well of fluxionary effervescences as of pathological 
efdorescences, according to the very order of the organic me- 
chanism on which this element of elaboration bears. For, in 
proportion as the individual advances in age, it elaborates itself, 
becomes more and more acrimonious according also to the sex 
and temperament of each individual, as in other respeccs it may 
also in certain circumstances, according to the capacity of indi- 
vidual resistance or other inappreciable organic condition remain 
profoundly silent in the economy until the coming into action of 
its properties, or until other dynamic motors arouse its complex 
spirit. 

Before, then, the rudementary state of this principle passes 
into definite conditions both idiosyncratic and pathological ( for 
we are considering its latent or occult state and not the patho- 
logical forms which it must represent ulteriorly) the organism 
must necessarily intervene and re-act pfimordially in time and 
place b^^ an alternate succession of normal or abnormal actions, 
either partial or general, which the animating cause arouses in 
tne organism. 

Undoubtedly like vegetable seeds, the principe dartreux also 
requires time, space and other anthroponoraical conditions for 
the evolution of its diverse pathological and even virulent phases 
and metamorphosesj which cannot, of course, spring at once 



into maturity from generation. If, then, the essence of these 
ulterior phenomena springs from a hereditary transmission, 
the jyi'iiicqye Dartreux or the Dartreux vice, as the Frencii scien- 
tists choose to name it, can no longer be considered as an element 
of recremento-excrementitial (pabulum vitce) retained in the blood, 
especially as it is not only refractory to disassimilatiou, but also 
as it is only very long after its occult manifestations of idiosyn- 
cratic incubation and fluxiouary tendencies as well as acute and 
chronic pathological entities, that it ends iu aiteriug the tissues 
or functions with which it has affinities?. 

In consequence, then, of so many transmiitarious as well as 
l)hysico-chemical modifications which take place in the very 
fibres of the tissues which conceal it, this Nastema {Dartreux 
princijje or diathesic leaven) travels with the blood to manifest 
itself under one form or another, according to the pre-established 
order of its hereditary evolutions and elective afi3.nities: or 
rather the organism will prepare its more mysterious infiueuces 
of spontaneity, even virulent, which can be appreciated only in 
its efiects when they manifest theifiselves. For in ail its passive 
phases of evolution or of pyretic activities, there is a moment of 
recurrence, even of recrudescence, according to the order of re- 
striction or of the organic activities which make a part of this 
inherency. 

It will not be less remarkable to add to this subject the multi- 
plicity of forms, both idiosyncratic and pathological, of which 
it is susceptible, according to the tissue, the organ, and even 
the system which it may reach ; for in the animal economy we 
know that many elements have more than one vital property. 
And we know too that in each organism there are as many or- 
ganic orders as there are parts which constitute it; — even each 
part offering a dynamic, physiologic or vital attribute which is 
peculiar to itself So is it with the difierent centres ot the great 
cerebral medulary system, every part or region of the grand 
sympathetic system and of the visceral plexuses and intergan- 
glionic. and also with all their sympathetic continuations ro all 
the functional apparatus and especially to the great cutaneous 
emunctory, each division of the respiratory and gastro-iutestinal 
passages, according as it is the wliole or a part which enters into 
action under the elective influence of the morbid element. 



-) 23 (- 



Whensoever, then, in its states of pyretic elaborations, draw- 
ing aside the veil of its occult nature, this principle says, -I am 
ihe bloom and very element of exanthematic, scarlatinous and 
rubeolous phenomena of infancy and youth," And in its apj'- 
retic states, anterior or ulterior to pyretic exanthema, it says 
again, '^I am the element, the unity of the plurality, recrudes- 
cent and recurrent of catarrhal and nevro-pathic affections 
common to the two poles of life." 

It is also evident that we do not seek here to exclude from all 
these effects the influence of the quality or quantity of the mor- 
bific cause, that is to say, even the possibility of an occult 
■pathological hybridation. Whatever may be the modifications or 
metamorphoses that the pnncipe Dartreux may undergo at cer- 
tain moments or perioils of life, whatever may be the tissue, the 
organ, the system on which these specific fluxions may bear, 
they do not change its specific nature, but only the type of its 
pathological phenomena and manifestations. Doubtless the 
properties of the different tissues, both of the functional and 
mucous systems, on which these fluxions bear, will have a great 
part in the local action, by virtue of the nervous irritation of 
their structure and of the nature of the irritating cause itself. 
But it is to the entire organism that the elaboration and tran ^- 
mut3:tion of the principe Dart reux in scarlatinous or rubeolous 
virus primordially appertain. If, therefore, there be order and 
system in the evolution of hereditary principles, the spontaneity 
of scarlatina and rubeola will be only apparent, whatever may 
be the characters of its pathological manifestations as well an- 
terior as posterior to these two pyrexias, they will be nothing- 
else than the effects of the same morbific principle, under the 
diversity of anthroponomic forces which participate in the de- 
velopment of all these indefinite larval forms. 

Since the mobility of the phenomena of the principe Dartreiu 
multiples in proportion to the diversity of the machinery of the 
economy, it is necessary that we demand the knowledge or the 
reason for these diverse manifestations from the organism itself, 
rather than ascribe to this insidious morbid principle a protei- 
form nature. As clay to the potter, however diverse may seem 
to be the pathological forms of the principe Dartreux, it is not 



-) 24 (- 



the nature of its principles which changes, but rather its char- 
acters under the control of the so very powerful forces of the 
organism. Do we not likewise see in nosography how varied 
are the effects of the same specific cause 1 

In syphilis, for example, how many varieties of pathological 
efflorescences arise from the same principle '? 

It is, then, much for these organic primordial reasons that it 
is perhaps almost an impossible thing, either in nevropathy or 
in pathology, that two cases of the same malady shall have be- 
tween them an absolute similitude, any more than we see in 
natural history two animals ot the same race, two individuals of 
the same family, two families of the same vegetable, resembling 
one another to the extent of having a perfect conformity. 

If, then, the exanthemata scarlatinous and rubeolous are as 
we hold, only a pyretic transmutation of tliQ Dartreiix Principley 
we have too long misconceived the control of organic forces over 
the obscure problem of the combinations and metamorphoses of 
this morbid heredity. 

Because it is forbidden to the spirit of the art to reveal the 
mysteries of organic laws or their modes of activity on which 
depend the differential characters of the pathological phenomena 
of these two pyrexias, shall anyone for this reason deny the vir- 
tuaiity of the elaboration and transmutation of the principe Dar- 
treux into scarlatinous and rubeolous exanthemata? 

Moreover, the exanthema of these two pyrexias does not con- 
stitute in itself the primary essence of these two maladies, any 
more than syphilitic and variolous eruption constitute, strictly 
speaking, syphilitic and variolous virus. They are always only 
the effects, the pathological metamorphoses, of the primary 
cause. The skin beiug otherwise in correllation, both direct and 
sympathetic, with the media of the functional system, so may ft 
be by its structure and by its delicateness and general sensibil- 
ity; and this too by virtue of that organic law which calls to 
itself, like other preponderant systems of the economy, the elim- 
ination ot every morbid constitutional principle. 

In what way, then, can it be so extraordinarily improbable 
that scarlatinous and rubeolous exanthema should be the ex- 
pression of the pyretic evolution and transmutation of the prin- 
cipe Dartreux f 



-) 25 {- 

Because it seems an impossibility to find a greater similitude 
between tlie anatomical internal lesions, local as well as general, 
with the exterior forms of these two pyrexias, nosologists, to the 
exclusion of the specific pature which relates them incontestably 
to this morbid heredity, have made two difterent species of at- 
mospheric sources, when they are in reality only two varieties 
of the same hereditary principle, at different degrees of pyretic 
elaboration and transmutation and different elective affinities. 

In our view, therefore, it is rather in the occultation and met- 
amorphosing x)henomena of this morbid heredity that we must 
seek for the explanation of the differential fluxionary phenom- 
ena, mucous as well as cutaneous of these two pyrexias, and not 
refer them to dissimilar atmospheric causes, inasmuch as the 
diversity of i)henomena linked to a hereditary cause fatally fol- 
lows anthroponomic influences and not atmospheric ones. 

If, then, scarlatina and rubeola are not in themselves pyrexias 
of a Dartreux origin, what are we t© think of those miliary ves- 
cicles (Herpes miliaris) eczematous and other specific varieties, 
mingled with sudaminas of the same nature *? We note, more- 
over, that in the same manner as the special varieties of these 
vesciculous efflorescences, scarlatinous eruption is likewise vari- 
able in its elective forms as in its periods of pathologic incuba- 
tions and invasion. For scarlatinous exanthema is far from 
being uniform and regular. Its eruption may be partial, limited 
to the neck, the body, the knees, the groins, the armpits, or even 
be entirely wanting, and revealed only by general symptoms. 

Again, what are angina scarlatinous and rubeolous bronchitis, 
if not vesciculous fluxionary metaphogoses of the same nature, 
which do not even spare the cerebro-spinal membranes at the 
end or in the course of these maladies, otherwise how could we 
account for that delirium with piercing or incessant crying which 
supervenes with infants during convalescence, even where the 
scarlatina or rubeola appear to have terminated, and when the 
fever had disappeared, and when we find no other explanation 
outside of these specific internal vescicular fluxions — wliich also 
manifest themselves under the forms of cuisson, of tension, of 
shooting pains, and even of itchings, and which api)ertain alike 
to the mucous membranes and to the skin. But outside of the 



~) 26 (_ 

symptomatology above mentioned^— if the frequent mingling of 
these two exanthemata, as well as the impossibility to cut short 
or abridge the evolution of their determinate career, do not im- 
ply a constitutional or hereditary caust^ why should the epidem- 
ographs, like the modern practitioners, abandon the antiphlo- 
gistic treatment, phebotomy^ local and general, purgatives and 
rigorous diet^ which have such great efScacy in combatting 
inflammations which originate from atmospheric sources? 

Shall we omit, also, the analysis of the sanguinous fluid made 
by Mr. Andral, in which he demoustrates the identity of the 
chemical and microscopic characters, and even the marked defib- 
rination of the blood of these two pyrexias? The non-inflamma- 
tory nature of these two maladies is therefore essential to be 
noted here. 

ELECTIVE AFFINITY OF KUBEOLOUS ATs^D SCARLATINOUS 
FLUXIONARY PHENOMENA. 

The fact that the localization of the mucous occulo-nasal 
pharyngeal and bronchial fluxionary phenomena of rubeola 
differ in their elective manifestations from those of scarlatina, 
does not in any way, we repeat, involve a different essential 
cause any more than the essential nature of the eczema of the 
hands and feet differs from that of the eczema of the hairy skin 
beyond the structure of these localizations, or that of conjuiic- 
tival, labial or pharyngeal herpes from that of other regions or 
natural openings. So is it in like manner with the specific flux- 
ions, as well partial as general, of these two pyrexias, which 
differ one from another only by different modes of election and 
elimination. 

The heredity of the pri7iGi])e Bartreux being admitted, it will 
be very difficult even to those who are imbued with the noso- 
logical classifications of the eczemato-herpetegenic varieties, to 
revoke into doubt the generalization of this morbid unity in 
rubeolous or scarlatinous pyrexias at certain moments or periods 
of life. 

If, therefore, the special characters of vesiculous and squam- 
mous groups which we observe in the course of these two mal- 
adies were not in themselves sufficient to establish in an iucon- 
testible mauner the Dartreux nature of these two affections, 



~) 27 (- 

what then shall we think of those endopericardites, those pleu- 
resies, those pleurodyniae, concomitant or consecative, which 
are undoubtedly the consequence, if not the direct expressions 
of vesiculous internal eczemato-herpitigenous phenomena whose 
heredity of principle is admitted by all dermatologists ? 

How can we call into donbt then the Dartreux nature of these 
two pyrexiae, above all when we see them not only manifest 
themselves long after certain vesicular herpitigenous or ecze- 
matous eruptions, as well occular as buccal, of the lips and their 
corners, of the ears and of the scalp, as also of the specific in- 
fluences, catarrhal, pharengenic, bronchial, intestinal, which have 
existed even from infancy, the re-appearance of the same affec- 
tions, sub-acute as well as chronic, and other more profound 
constitutional phenomena, posteriorly and even successively to 
them, such as lao'iymal fistula, caries of the minor bones of the 
nose and the ear, the necrosis of the petrous bone, facial paral- 
ysis and sometimes also the inflammation of the meninges, with 
abcess even of the brain following scarlatina if not also ru- 
beola ? 

How again can it be doubted that the minute points of adhe- 
sion, sparse, extremely circumscribed, file-form, distinctly sep- 
arated from each other, joining the costal pleura to the 
pulmonary pleura, uniting the peritoneum of the abdominal 
wall to that of the intestines, as we have observed at the open- 
ing of the thoracic and abdominal cavities in young subjects 
who have succumbed long after the exhaustion of scarlatinous 
and rubeolous complications, — are not also of the Dartreux 
nature ? 

On the other hand again, the dry adhesion (a veritable retic- 
ulation of delicate filaments) pai tial or total, with many adults 
dying of affections foreign to free pleuro pneumonia and to tu- 
berculosis are yet incontestably under the influence of herpe- 
ligenous diathesis. 

Having reached this point of pathology and medical i)hiloso- 
phy, that is to say, of the elaborations, transmutations and 
hybridations of the principe Dartreux in exanthemata or scarla- 
tinous and rubeolous virus, why then does iiot variolous exan- 
thema also take its origin In a constitutional or discrasic state 



-)28(- 

of the economy, like otiier specific varieties in the same way as 
bubo and caries of the bones take theirs in a deep impregnation 
of syphilitic heredity We repeat then here that these two 
eruptive fevers, scarlatina and rubeola, are for our purpose just 
as much related to Dartreux heredity as roseola and other un- 
mentioned pathological varieties are related on the other hand 
to syphilitic heredity — rlikewise variola to a discasic state of the 
economy", under the sway of organic correlative forces. 

Thus, theD, do we account for the origin and nature of erup- 
tive, scarlatinous, rubeolous and variolous fevers. 

A word here on the correlation of the iluxionary influence of 
the Dartreux element with cutaneous vascularisation — and the 
elevation of the temperature, and also of the great nervous phe- 
nomena of these two pyrexias. 

To day all the world knows the remarkable labors of Mr. 
Claude Bernard upon the great sympathetic nerve and its an 
nexes. We know, through him, that the section of this nerve 
brings on in the parts where it distributes its filets, not a paral- 
ysis, but, much to the reverse, a great exaggeration in the calor- 
ification and vascularisation of certain organic functions, as of 
the cutaneous system. The illustrious ex-professor of the Col- 
lege of France has also shown that in cutting the filet of the 
tris^lanchenique, which goes to the ear and the face of the hare, 
he established in these parts a vascularization and an elevation 
of temi^erature above the normal state of the opposite side. 

He has shown also that in destroying the thorasic ganglions 
and those of the solar plexis, analogous effects will be produced^ 
causing phenomena both inflammatory and nervous. 

Instead of the section of the nerves, if we cause to intervene 
the mysterious influence of eczemato-herpetigenous fluxions, 
which act very much as a galvano-cautery upon one or the other 
section of the trisplanchnic system, or the ganglionary system, 
for the scarlatina, than which among all maladies none other 
offers a greater cutaneous vascularization and a greater general 
elevation of temperature, we should be put in the way perhaps 
to explain those great nervous, deliriant, convulsive dyspne-iques, 
as well as the irrepressible vomitings, bilious of scarlatina — 
while for rubeola it would rather be the cerebro-spinal system 
which would come into action under the influence of the same 
morbific cause. 



EVOLUTION AND TRANSMUTATION OF THE DABTREUX PRIN- 
CIPLE IN SCARLATINOUS OR RUBEOLOUS PYREXIAS VS. 
THE CURRENT THEORY OF CONTAGIOUSNESS, BOTH INDI- 
VIDUAL AND ATMOSPHERIC, AS COMMONLY ALLEGED. 

For the reason that, as we have said elsewhere, it must be 
forever forbiddeii to the genius of the art to ravish from the 
mysteries of anthroponomia, or of anthropochemia, those modes 
of organic action which preside over the evolution and transmu- 
tation of the form or the forms, as well as of the modes of elim- 
ination and elections of the Dartreux principle on which depend 
the differential characters of the pathological phenomena of 
these two pyrexias, shall the existence of this organic power be 
therefore denied? Undoubtedly, in like manner as the seeds 
of annual and biennial plants have need of telluric influences 
and those of the seasons, so the morbid principle which consti- 
tutes the specific characters of these two pyrexias must also 
have need of a concurrence of causes, both occasional atmos- 
pheric as well as organic, for the evolution and elaboration of 
its pathological forms, which depend less on atmospheric influ- 
ences than on the proper tendency of the nature of the morbid 
principle, as well as of the modes of the reactions peculiar to 
the organism. 

In what, then, does the essence of scarlatinous aud rubeolous 
efflorescences differ at certain moments or periods of life from 
the sap of plants or the germination of seeds? Cannot the sea- 
sons and atmospheric influences be in the same way the accasion 
of the development of this special occult cause in the organism 
without, for this reason, constituting the vehicle of an exterior 
contagia vivunij since it often happens that it is dispensed with, 
inasmuch as these two pyrexias (scarlet fever and measles) occur 
every month in the year. 

Moreover, organic sensibility renders no servile obedience to 
the physical action of the atmosphere, yielding to its sway only 
within the always uncertain limits of its acquired or original 
aptitudes and morbid conditions. Does not the usual absence 
of the efdcient contagious cause, as on the other hand the ab- 
sence of exterior occasional causes in the development of either 
scarlatina or rubeola, justify the hypothesis of a constitutional 



-) 30 (- 



cause or morbid lieredity ? What cau be more couclnsive than 
the case of a vacciuated woman giving birth to a child which 
has the small-pox; or of another, on the contrary, who not hav- 
ing scarlatina, gives birth to a child with all the characters of 
this disease; and then again, the issue from a married couple 
whom we know never to have been subjected to exterior syphil- 
itic contagion, and the child at birth is afflicted with the speci- 
fic hereditary disease alluded to? The diseases of the newly born 
as well as of the young, in our opinion, can depend only upon 
a class of causes and conditions directly or indirectly transmitted 
by their progenitors. This is no chimera, we contend, not only 
because the offspring is under the fate of an anterior hereditary 
existence, but also succumbs to the errors of its parents, to the 
decree of their sufferings and cause of their death, because her- 
edity uses the same fidelity and the same constancy in the 
bringing about of pain and death to beings of a like nature, as 
it does in the transmission of the features and the characters of 
their organization. Atmospheric and climatic influences no 
more contain within themselves the essential principle of scar- 
latina and rubeola than the ingestion of crustaceous or cruciform 
substances contain in themselves the ijrinciples of fehris urticata, 
or than alcoholic influences contain the active principle of real 
gout, rheumatism, etc., etc. 

Whether, therefore, it be a seed that germinates in the ground 
or a morbid principle in process of nosological incubation or 
evolution, atmospheric influences will a priori only be the in- 
fluences of reciprocity to the tendency of this principle, whose 
pathological forms depend rather upon the nature of the organic 
forces and not upon primordial atmospheric influences, as a great 
many would have it. It is then more probable that it is neither 
to the climate nor to generally admitted atmospheric influences 
that we must refer the explosion or propagation of scarlatinous 
and rubeolous exanthemata, but rather, in our opinion, to the 
generality and diffusion of this hereditary cause to which are 
linked, according to us, all the chemical and pathological phe- 
nomena of these two pyrexias. In view of all these facts we do 
not understand why these pyretic exanthemata should be class- 
ified as great contagious diseases of atmos[»heric sources, — not 



-)31(- 

only because they are iu their esseuce contemporaneous with the 
human race, but also because they have always existed eudimically 
and epidemically in all parts of the world j and because, more- 
over, that under sporadic characters the}' giv^e manifest proofs 
of transmissibility through the seminal medi im, notwithstanding 
the diiference of localities, climates and seasons. For heredi- 
tary maladies, as well acute as chronic, have also their geogra- 
phy, as well as their chronology of ages, comprising infancy, 
youth, manhood and old age, and whose manifestations differ 
among themselves only in relation to the nature of the organ- 
ization and of the sex. 

It is evident that, in order that either of these two maladies 
should manifest itself endemically or epidemically, it is strictly 
necessary that the individual or individuals must find them- 
selves equally under the same conditions of morbid idiosyncracy; 
otherwise one would reveal a special coryza and another com- 
mon angina (Herpes pharyngeal) or catarrhal bronchitis, while 
with others it would be scarlatina, or rubeola by much the most 
frequent. 

If, therefore, the evolution of this diathesic leaven (Principe 
Dartreux) can transform itself in one case into a special coryza, 
into common angina conneunense (Herpes pharyngeal) into lar- 
yngitis, as well as into catarrhal bronchitis, why not then also 
into scarlatinous and rubeolous exanthemata? 

It is then, again, for these reasons that we see individuals 
show affections different from the medical constitution, even 
escaping apparently from the reigning disease, and manifesting 
it only a very long time afterwards. 

These two pyretic exanthemata would not therefore be con- 
tagious diseases of atmospheric production, but, as we believe, 
only the resultance of a general hereditary cause which can 
doubtless be hastened by certain atmospheric conditions which 
disturb the equilibrium of the organic elements which conceal it. 

If, then, our observations are well founded, the propagation 
as well as the malignity of these two pyrexias will depend still 
much less upon atmospheric and telluric conditions than upon 
the individual idiosyncratic i)redisposition, as well as upon the 
quality and quantity of this elaboration and elective affinities 



-) 32 (- 



Upon which the gravity of either one depends. Besides, daily 
observation demonstrates that, in the generality of cases, these 
two pyrexias propagate themselves by attacking at first and 
successively only the members of the same family, although 
among these they may encounter some whose organism will re- 
main refractory to the usual tendencies of this latent principle, 
yet only for an undeterminate period. Who, in addition to this, 
has not observed those exemptions, none too frequent it is true, 
where many members of the same family have escaped the so- 
called contagioQ of the disease, as it happens also that some of 
their symptoms may predominate or be entirely absent, while 
one or two of the family have already succumbed to a scarlatina 
of the most malignant type*? 

How many others, who have nursed their brothers and sisters 
in these diseases, have yet escaped the so-called contagion, or 
at least have taken the disease on]j a very long time afterwards, 
no one being able to trace the contagious principle to any known 
source? It is, therefore, necessary that the economy should find 
itself under very peculiar conditions, as well of incubation as of 
morbid idiosyncracy, in order that the explosion of either shall 
take place, irrespective of mediate or direct contact. 

Because it is true that one or the other of these eruptive fevers 
may hfi^eak cut in infancy as well as in youthful age without 
there being aay herpinginous or eczematous manifestations, 
shall it be concluded from this that they are not the expression 
of this morbid transmutation ? We may be well assured, too, 
that in the organism as in nature, there is no lusus naturw. That 
which is called so is only an order of occult causes which we do 
not comi)rehend Ux nihilo nihil ; for on the other hand it is no 
less certain that in a majoritj^ of circumstances, at a period, it 
is true, more or less long and indeterminate from birth, the ex- 
plosion either of rubeola or scarlatina will appear generally 
with individuals who have been subject previously to fugacious 
heri)etigenous or eczematous eruptions of the ears, of the nose, 
of the lips, if not to occular catarrhal fluxions, or bronchial or 
intestinal diarrhooeform, which are observed even at the earliest 
age. Again, there is not the least doubt that these apyretic 
catarrhal fluxions have also the greatest analogy to those of the 



— ) 33 — 



riibeolous aud scarlatinous pyrexias, when these latter exist ab- 
normally with characters of mildness. In fact, all things con- 
sidered, RDgina scarlatinous or herpes pharyngeal are germain in 
their essence only to a h'gher degree of pyretic intensity in 
scarlatina. ^Nevertheless, angine coneneuse commune (herpes 
pharyngeal) seems in many conditions to operate as an immu- 
nity, aud often abnormal scarlatina has only this anatomical 
symptom for its ideutification. It is the same with occulo-nasal 
and apyretic bronchial fluxions, with the same phenomena as 
occur ^dth respect to rubeola. The aualogy. therefore, which 
under certain circumstances unites the catarrhal, herpetigenous 
or apyretic eczematous fluxions of the mucous membranes with 
those of rubeola and scarlatina is such that they may foretell 
ulteriorly one or the other of these two exanthemata at an inde- 
terminate period of many months or years provided always that 
these subjects have not already had them. 

As we have already shown, the phenomena of Dartreux in- 
herency may declare themselves at birth by a specific congestion 
aud by an extremely fine furfuraceous disquammation of the 
epidermis of the neck, the face, the bends of the limbs, the fossa 
and the genital parts, it is proper to remark here that minute 
circumstances often have an important significance. At other 
times this will be a congestive blepharo-occular, naso pharyngeal, 
irritation , at others it will be a veritable occular phlogosis. na- 
so-pharangeal, bronchial, fugacious or persistent, with abundant 
mucous secretion, even of the gastro-intestinal ducts, with colics 
and green passages, of the same nature: because in the same manner 
as with the natural openings, these specific fluxions bear equally 
upon the conduits of the secretory organs, for which a bad den- 
tition or even the quality of the maternal milk does not 
account. 

With many other vonng subjects, it is true, these phenomena 
may not manifest themvselves. and may reveal themselvfs 
only a very long time after birth. Nevertheless, at the age of 
two to six years, more or less, when there have been neither of 
these two pyrexias there will be, alternately, acute sufferings 
expressed by piercing cries, deep visceral pains, without our be- 
ing able to determine exactly the nature or locality of the pain or 



-) 34 (- 



]>ains. which none the less certainly come from deep herpetigen- 
oils or eczematons fluxions, and which ignorance too often 
ascribes to the bad temper of the child, which stiffens itself and 
tosses itself from right to left in the mother's arms. At other 
times the mother becomes anxious about her child, which for 
some days has not been as well as usual. It sleeps badly or 
wakes up in very bad humor. It does not take the breast, or if 
past iufaacy it does not eat as it is accustomed to do. The skin 
is hot. yet without fever, and it wants to drink ofreu. These 
physical sufferings are accompanied by a gradual emaciation. 
When the family doctor is called he recognizes the phenomena 
of fugitive encephalic irritations expressed by a fixed look or a 
crossing of the eyes alternately, even convulsive, accompanied 
with a certain ]ialor of the face according as "the fluxionary 
election may act directly or sympathetically from the abuomiual 
viscera or other part of the economy, upon one or the other of 
the branches of the great nervous centres. In cases much more 
serious there will be, on the contrary, cerebro-spinal phenomena 
with deep sudden neuralgia accompanied by veritable and re-it- 
erated convulsions, and which after continuiug at irregular 
intervals often leave after them persistent blindness and deaf- 
ness. A fact not less remarkable is that in the interval of these 
convulsive pains, the child sometimes comes so well to itself 
that it voluntarily yields to the distractions which before could 
not captivate it, and then craves for such nourishmeut as it may 
fancy. 

After becoming assured that the convulsions were not caused 
by worms, all is considered to be in order ; when a few hours, a 
few days, even a few months have passed, the child is again at- 
tacked by the same suff'erings. Is not the very intermittence of 
these different crises another evidence of those specific fluxions 
to which we refer? In addition to this, do not the beautiful ex- 
periments of Mr. Claude Bernard on the nervous centres authi)r- 
ize us to compare these fluxionary elections to those abnormal 
congestive irritations which the learned physiologist determiues 
in different parts of the body, either by galvauo-cautery inita- 
tioii, or cutting off the braaches of the vegetable nervous 
system? 



_) 35 (- 



At leugtb, after a period of suspension more or less long, an 
interval of several months or even years, if it is not for one of 
the eruptive fevers, it will be another sj'mptomatic diversity of 
catarrhal hoarseness, simulating at times an incipient laryugitis, 
a bronchial catarrh, a tuberculosis with nevropathic points. 
With other subjects, especially with, females, these after symp- 
toms will, on the contrary, translate themselves by intolerabUi 
headaches, deafness, transient loss of taste and smell, aud other 
paroxysmal phenomena of laryngeal or iaryugo-bronchial cough; 
of dryness, of tickling in the throat, of itchings aud smarting of 
the hands or feet. When these strange symptoms do not mani- 
fest themselves there will be fluxionary states of oppression, 
heats and internal smartiug, deep visceral, and even sub-catan- 
eous, from which ensue cruel insomnias. 

At other times, again, it will affect the utfiine parts under 
the form of catarrhal dysmeuorrhoea, vaginal leucorrhcea, also 
by extension to the fallopian tube and the ovaries, even appear- 
ing to be an organic inflammation. While these fluxions are 
never positive inflammations, yet if they supervene under atmos- 
pheric influence such influence will be only the occasional cause, 
by provoking upon those organs or functions an impression by 
virtue of which the iirincipe Bartreiix is carried to them. The 
same facts are also observed as to the urethra, the neck of the 
bladder, the prostate gland aud the seminal vesicles of the oppo- 
site sex, producing in these also the same inconveniences of irri- 
tations, itchings with prostato-spermatorrhseic flowing, incon- 
testible precursors of tabes dorsaUs. and of the bad habits among 
young persons. From which follows certain forms of gastralgia, 
dyspeptic emaciation diarrhoeform, or a most obstinate consti- 
pation — all of which are but intermittent pathological phenom- 
ena linked to the unity of the morbid principles referred to. 

Therefore, we again repeat that this great diversity of patho- 
logical phenomena does not, in our opinion, at all iuiply a pro- 
teiform character in tlm priucipe Dartreux^ but rather that of the 
nature and structure of the organic elements upon which this 
element bears. But it is auother class of fluxionary phenomena 
very diflerently fruitful m metastases and in pathogenic meta- 
morphoses. We say pathogenic, because physiology, as well as 



-) 36 (- 



pathology, cannot actually account for it outside of the fluxion- 
ary forces of the morbid essence itself, — and because the nervous 
affections of hereditary origin are never manifested in full to the 
eyes of the art except through functional and non-material per- 
turbations of the nervous system. We here refer to the innu- 
merable phenomena of iuervation, of morbid idiosyncracies of 
nervous and nevropathic states, even visceral, which we believe 
we must call diathetical* by reason of their affinities or connec- 
tions^ with the nervous system. We cannot too often call med- 
ical attention to these facts of our days, too much despised of 
ancient medical practice and medical philosophy. 

But in what consists and where is concealed under these later 
forms that imponderable and even deleterious diathetical fluid, 
so long before the appearance of these phenomena and complex 
morbid states'? 

In a profound abnormal impregnation as in chemical disinte- 
gration of constitutional elements, solid and liquid, whose rela- 
tions of contiguity or vital sympathies may bear equally upon 
all points of the great nervous centres of animal life. 

Id view, therefore, of the relations which exist among the 
solid and liquid elements of the economy with the great nervous 
centres, since they intervene everywhere, participate in all the 
physical, chemical and dynamic attributes of life, every perturb- 
ation of an organ or of its functions by this morbid element, as 
foreign as it seems to the nervous system, can yet reflect or 
react upon all its physiological acts and thus become the origin 
of all the troubles of pathologic and even psychologic innerva- 
tions the most foreign in their characters. As for ourselves, we 
have no other way to conceive of the metastasic influence of 
these occult fluxions upon the generation of abnormal phenom- 
ena and disorders of the nervous system. Doubtless it is from 
the labyrinth of the phenomena and characters of innervation that 
many can borrow their complex effects, it may be from a combi- 
nation or pathological hybridation with other principles of mor- 
bid heredity; for nothing is more frequent than to meet differing 

'The expression. ' Diathetical," or " Diathesis.'' would then represent for us n^thiutj 
else bat the occaltation ot latent polymorphosic unities of morbid heredity on ways to 
anatomical affinities and pathological electivna^s in correlation with susceptibilities of 
tLssues and divisions of or;;aaic systems. 



-) 37 (- 

diathetical principles in the conjugal union- and this especially, 
since of all the morbid principles of hereditary transmission, 
none other is more diffused by generation or more variable in 
its idiosyncratic manifestations and pathologic metamorphoses 
than that which constitutes our subject. 

It is, therefore, of supreme importance to those who must, 
soon or late, inevitably undergo the pernicious influences of this 
morbid heredity, that these influences should be known in their 
X)rinciple in order that an appropriate medication may be directed 
against it, without which we must find ourselves in extreme un- 
certaiaty an^l perplexity, when we have to deal with a train of 
nervous phenomena manifesting tliemselves with most alarming 
symptoms, as well moral as physical; and this because the var- 
iable transposition of the phenomena of this heredity as well 
as the very strangeness of the sensations, apparently irrational, 
will rapidly simulate many alfections before its nature can be 
recognized by them. This, in fact, is the sufficient reason why 
too often the unlucky victims of these great disorders are dis- 
tressed with the advice of the attendant physician and with the 
importance of his art. Let us also say that it is really on account 
of the ignorance of these facts that our art has too often surrend- 
ered its brightest prestige to empyricism, which is at this epoch 
the evil of badly understood therapeutics and the uncertainty of 
nervous pathogeny. The elaborations and transmutations pyr- 
etic and apyretic of the princqje Bartreux under the control of 
the vital properties of the economy are great questions, as well 
for the nosography as for the therapeutics of its diverse patho- 
logical forms. 

&ENERAL REMARKS 

Upon the Urgency and necessity of a Biennial Prophylactic Treat - 
ment folloiced from year to year from the earliest ages, not only 
icith the purpose of eUminatiag eventually scarlatina and ruhe. 
ola from the list of maladies called atmospheric contagious, hut 
also for the purpose of preventing the heredity of this principle 
from impregnating the organism at the point of passing to the 
nervous diathetical for )ns to which we have referred. 



-) 38 (- 



The urgent pre- occupation of life, the great difficulty of always 
preserviup^ the same families as regular clients, the impossibil- 
ity, moreover, of convincing the nearest among them of the im- 
portance and the necessity of a special treatment for the ulterior 
elimination of these two maladies, and in consequence also of 
the non-transmission of their principle, have much embarrassed 
our attempts. Nevertheless, as to a certain number of families 
which have remained faithful for a number of years we have 
been fortunate enough to obtain from them the application de- 
rived from this medical conviction which dates back for a period 
of over thirty years. Those idigent families to whom we refer 
had each one assigned to us one or two of their little children 
for the task which we had imposed upon ourselves. 

In the absence, even, of all indispositions whatsoever, two or 
three times each year, particularly in spring and autumn, we 
instituted a special medication until the children had attained 
to their fifth or sixth year. These ten or eleven children to 
whom we refer are now grown persons, who have never had 
either scarlatina or ruheola. while many of their brothers ard 
sisters, who had not been subjected to any antecedent medica- 
tion, have had rubeola and scarlatina, and from which even 
death resulted. 

The critic will doubtless answer to this, that the facts attrib- 
uted to prophylactic treatment were only the simple and fortu- 
nate circumstances of exceptions or exemptions. Without deny- 
ing these happy exemiJtions, we assume nevertheless to maintain 
that these two eruptive fevers do not reveal tbemselves in indi- 
viduals in whom this morbid heredity does not exist, for we ad- 
mit also that it may not have been transmitted, or rather, may 
have remained latent in one individual, revealing itself only iu 
its progeny. 

Xotwithstauding the honesty of these medical convictions, we 
appreciate only too well the insufficiency of these data aud ob- 
servations j which, however, we shall cherish until the practical 
experience of the masters of the art shall contradict the remarks 
and results above set forth. Moreover, if, as in Europe, we had 
an asylum for foundlings, where unnatural mothers might place 
tbeir illegitimate progeny, this in)j)ortant question could be 
investigated and settled in a couple of years. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

nil llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll llllllllllllllllil 



021 623 829 1 ^ 



